ORVILLE L. HUBBARD OF DEARBORN

ORVILLE L. HUBBARD OF DEARBORN; EX-MAYOR A FOE OF INTEGRATION

By SHAWN G. KENNEDY

Published: December 17, 1982

Orville L. Hubbard, the flamboyant former Mayor of Dearborn, Mich., whose 15 terms in office were characterized by municipal efficiency and his outspoken segregationist policies, died yesterday in Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. He was 80 years old.

He had been a patient at the hospital since Nov. 21 and had suffered cardiac arrest, a hospital spokesman said. He was Dearborn's Mayor from 1942 until 1978. Earlier, Mr. Hubbard, a Republican, sought political office 19 times over 10 years, running for everything from justice of the peace to Congressman, before he was elected Mayor in 1941 by 129 votes.

In his administration, Dearborn enjoyed considerable municipal wealth, due in part to corporate taxes from the Ford Motor Company. Constituents of the Mayor, a former automobile worker, enjoyed such services and benefits as snow removal that included the plowing of both the streets and sidewalks, and free baby-sitting. A Florida Haven for Elderly

Mr. Hubbard led the city to purchase a $2.2 million resort in Clearwater, Fla., for Dearborn's elderly. Mr. Hubbard, who once weighed 300 pounds, was described by Life magazine as ''the most clownish mayor in the United States.'' In World War II, he organized a flotilla to patrol the Detroit River for German submarines. In 1951, found guilty of libeling a political rival, the Wayne County Circuit Court ordered him to remain in the county until a $7,500 fine was paid.

He fled to Ontario where he set up a ''government-in-exile'' in Windsor. While denying that he was a racist, in word and deed he expressed his segregationist convictions. In 1965, he was indicted under a Federal civil rights statute for allowing the Dearborn police to stand by while a crowd stoned the house of a resident who was mistakenly believed to have sold his property to a black family. Mr. Hubbard, acquitted, treated the jury to a steak dinner. 'I Favor Segregation'

His position on racial issues kept all but a handful of blacks from moving to the Detroit suburb of which he was Mayor even though, in the 1960's, nearly a third of the 36,000 employees of the Ford Motor Company's Dearborn plant were blacks. ''I'm against anything that's unpopular with the public,'' Mr. Hubbard told a reporter. ''I favor segregation.''

Orville Luscum Hubbard was born in Union City, Mich. He had to drop out of high school after two years when his father died. He served in the Marine Corps and attended college briefly before enrolling in the Detroit College of Law.

Mr. Hubbard served as an assistant Michigan Attorney General before he established a private law practice in Dearborn. In 1974, a stroke left him partly paralyzed. He then served as mayor in name only.

Mr. Hubbard's wife, the former Faye Cameron, died in 1979. He leaves four sons, a daughter, 16 grandchildren and four greatgrandchildren.